Tag Archives: Christian womanhood

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some good reads discovered recently – perhaps you’ll find something of interest here as well:

I Can’t Be Good Much Longer, HT to Challies. Loved this.

A Simple Way to Spend 45 Minutes a Day With the Lord.

A Post Mortem on A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I still haven’t gotten to this book yet, but Wendy brings up a serious issue with how the author handles the Word of God.

How Should I Handle Anger When Disciplining? I always appreciate Jen’s thoughtful and careful approach to topics.

I Won’t Force My Kids to Go to Church. Reasons to rather than not to, as I originally thought by the title.

Let Heroes of the Faith Teach You Today. Regular readers know I advocate reading biographies of Christians who have gone before us. Here is another reason to: “A diet consisting largely of blogs and books written by modern-day men and women who have lived a mere three, four, or five decades in affluent America is a recipe for spiritual malnutrition.”

Little House on the Prairie to Get a New Film Adaptation. I’m not sure how I feel about that. It will depend on how it is handled. I also enjoyed the links here to a segment with 8 of the TV show cast members together after some 20 years or so. Fun to see what they look like now!

Finally, I saw this video at The Story Warren and found more information on the typewriter artist, Paul Smith, here. He was born with cerebral palsy and not expected to live long, but he lived to be 85. He began using a neighbor’s discarded typewriter when he was about 11 and eventually began creating amazing works of art using only about 10 keys. What a reminder not to judge someone’s abilities and soul by outward appearances. And to concentrate not on what you can’t do but on what you can.

Happy Saturday!

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some thought-provoking reads discovered in the last week:

We Lost a Child, and Gained Something Greater.

The Not-So-Quiet Quiet Time. HT to Challies. “”It has become common among Christians to think that listening to God means being quiet and listening to our own hearts. But here’s the problem with that: God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).” “That is why the Bible says that the “entrance” of God’s Word gives light (Psa. 119:130, KJV). We do not have entrance to God through any other way, except the Word of God. You won’t get to know God by reflecting on your own thoughts and feelings on the sofa with some Christian music on in the background. You listen to God with an open Bible!”

A lot of us seem to be thinking about Titus 2 ladies. The day I posted I’m an older woman…now what? Jess Connell posted The Elusive Titus 2 Woman. She has some reasons I hadn’t thought of for the seeming lack of them plus a reminder to compare their advice with Scripture. She also linked to another good post, Titus 2 IRL – Is that what you really want? I especially like this quote from the latter: “It will be difficult to find this type of relationship online, but not completely impossible. Should we have IRL Titus 2 women?  Yes – but be prepared to listen and potentially get your feelings stepped on.  If you want those real relationships, you have to be willing to be real and raw and teachable.  Iron sharpens iron and sharpening hurts…. Is that what you really want?”

When Life Feels Like Drudgery. “Faithfulness in drudgery is what faithfulness is all about.  Most of life is drudgery, isn’t it?  The messes, the commute, the weeds that keep growing, the bellies that need feeding, the clothes that need washing….When I step back, I see that the cooking and the homework and the messes are part of the much more glorious picture of what God is doing in our family.”

Seven reasons why you shouldn’t read 1 Timothy 6:1-2 as an endorsement of slavery.

Hail, January. It’s my least favorite month, but this has some things to appreciate about it.

How to Encourage (or Discourage) a Writer on Deadline.

Short but sweet – a baby sea otter napping while his mom is floating:

Happy Saturday!

 

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot

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For the past two years I have participated in 31 Days, a blog challenge wherein a blogger can choose a topic to write about every day in October. Last year I shared 31 Days of Inspirational Biography, and the year before 31 Days of Missionary Stories. I enjoyed them very much, but they did take up a great deal of time, even though many of them were pre-written for a ladies’ newsletter. I wasn’t sure if I would participate this year or not, but as I pondered what topic I would write about if I did do it, the only thing that came to mind (until today) was to share quotes from Elisabeth Elliot. She has probably had the most profound influence on my life of anyone I have known or read, in the areas of walking with and serving the Lord in general as well as being a Christian woman, wife, and mother. She was a true Titus 2 woman to me though I never knew her personally. I appreciate the way she didn’t pull any punches, so to speak, about what it costs to follow the Lord, but she always pointed us back to His love, wisdom, care, and sufficiency. She just passed away this past June, and I believe it’s imperative that her voice continues to live on and share with women for generations to come.

Elisabeth Elliot2I wondered if someone else might choose her writings for a topic this month, but finally decided it doesn’t matter. If someone else does, we will probably share different things and with a different audience, and even if we overlap, that’s okay.

If you’d like to learn more about 31 Days and see what the different categories are, you can go here. There is a Facebook group for participants here and a Pinterest group here. I’m excited to see some of the topics already! I enjoyed some good reading there last year.

If you’d like to read this series, you can either subscribe to my blog (see a couple of different ways to do so on the sidebar) or bookmark this post. I’ll share a list with a link to each post from the month here.

Day 1: Limitations.
Day 2: Irritants as God’s Messengers.
Day 3: Thy list be done.
Day 4: The Rupture of Self.
Day 5: Enjoying the 80%
Day 6: How to Do the Job You Don’t Really Want To Do.
Day 7: Writing By Faith.
Day 8: Treading Alone.
Day 9: Can God Use Our Imperfections?
Day 10: Background of the phrase “Do the Next Thing”
Day 11: Nothing Is Lost If Offered to Christ.
Day 12: A Quiet Heart.
Day 13: On Asking God Why.
Day 14: A Devious Repentance.
Day 15: God’s Help For God’s Assignment.
Day 16: Learning the Father’s Love (and letting go of self in light of it)
Day 17: Transformation.
Day 18: Forgiveness.
Day 19: Ordinary work (meditations from the life of Mary)
Day 20: No Further Than Natural Things.
Day 21: What Fits Us For Service.
Day 22: Loneliness.
Day 23: The World Must Be Shown.
Day 24: A Call to Older Women.
Day 25: The Face of Jesus.
Day 26: Freedom and Discipline.
Day 27: Spending Time Alone With God.
Day 28: The Hand That Hurts and the Hand That Heals.
Day 29: The Key to Supernatural Power.
Day 30: Short quotes.
Day 31: Book List and Memorial Video.

When the message isn’t for me

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Courtesy offreedigitalphotos.net

Courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

A week or two ago I came across a blog post that got me to thinking about how we respond when a meeting, church service, or even a Bible passage seems to apply to someone other than myself. When there is an ordination service or a Mother’s or Father’s Day message or children’s program, do I skip them because I am not a part of any of that?

I don’t think so. Here’s why:

1. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” II Timothy 3:16-17. It is all profitable for me in some way even if the particular passage doesn’t seem to apply to me.

Some years ago the pastor of the church where we were at the time read a few verses from Exodus with instruction about oxen. He asked, “Do any of you own an ox?” No one raised their hands.

He then asked, “How many of you have even seen an ox?” One or two raised their hands.

“So,” he said, “We should just turn the page and skip this passage, right?” No, we didn’t think so, but what do we do with that passage?

He then brought out several applications from the passage. For instance, someone who owned an ox that was known for trying to push people with its horn was more liable if it injured someone. So if we have, say, a dog with a tendency to bite, we are even more responsible to keep it from people it could hurt. Or, to apply it further, if our tail lights are out on our car, we’re liable if someone crashes into us because they didn’t know we were stopped or slowing down to turn, so it behooves us to keep up with those things.

2. It helps us understand our brothers and sisters in the Lord. I may not be a pastor or a husband or a mother, but the passages that talk about them help me understand their roles, not so I can form a checklist and note when they’re not getting it right, but so that I can pray for them, understand their problems, needs, and temptations, and encourage them. The Bible says the church is the body or Christ, and “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (I Corinthians 12:26).

3. Their position is under attack. Satan is not omnipresent, but he does get around, and he seeks to undermine everything God calls good. Any role or function within the church, home, or family as designed by God is under attack in some way or another. The blog post I mentioned at the beginning was complaining, in part, that the focus on married women and mothers in some women’s ministries left single ladies out. I do think that is a valid point: not all women are called to be married, not all mothers are able to stay home, and we need to find ways to minister to the whole scope of womanhood. However, there are particular ways marriage and motherhood are being particularly attacked and undermined in the world today, so we need to help support those roles.

4. I can learn something that applies to me even though the particular focus of the passage or sermon is for someone else. Loving one another as Christ loved the church is something that applies to us all, not just husbands, so I can take an illustration that may be particularly about husbands and learn something I need in loving others. Years ago in college we were encouraged to read a particular book about leadership which I gleaned a lot from even though I was not a leader at the time (and still don’t naturally feel inclined to be now).

This is not to say that I should attend every focus group within the church since we’re all part of the body of Christ. Some of those were created to handle specific concerns in a smaller group setting. But when a Bible passage or sermon or ladies’ meeting seems to apply to someone else, there is still much I can learn and benefit from if I have ears to hear and a heart to receive.

Repost: The Back Burner

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I’ve had some other obligations this week that have taken much of my computer time: I’ve been thinking about and working on some other posts, but they need to incubate a while longer. Meanwhile, this morning this post came back to mind, and I thought I’d share it again. Sometimes I chafe that there are still things on the back burner that I thought I’d be able to get to when my children got older. I have to accept that the circumstances God has me in are His will for me now, and if those other desires are truly from Him, He’ll make a way for them in His time. So even though the major thrust of this article has to do with parenting, it applies in any area where God wants us to wait on His timing.

This is one of the few articles I’ve had published. It appeared in Frontline magazine’s July-August 2005 issue. I wrote to Frontline asking permission to reprint the article here in January of 2008, which they granted: I am going to assume that permission extends to this repost as well.

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The Back Burner

Every mother, particularly one who has very small children, can get discouraged sometimes. Even though a woman has looked forward to being a mother all her life and delights in her child, there are those days when she feels she is accomplishing nothing beyond wiping noses and changing diapers, when she feels her mind is turning to mush after reading Dr. Seuss and Curious George all day, when she longs to do something “important.” Certain intellectual and creative pursuits have to be put on the back burner because there are only so many hours in the day. Even some ministry opportunities have to wait until the children are a bit older. It is easy to lament what we can’t do.

Of course, young mothers are not the only ones who have to put things on the back burner. Newlyweds, new teachers, students, young singles getting started in a career, middle-aged children taking care of an elderly parent, and any number of other life situations will cause us to have to focus on the business at hand and delay other pursuits. But motherhood is the area through which the Lord taught me about the back burner.

Some 15-20 years ago I read something in a secular women’s magazine that greatly encouraged me and has stayed with me ever since. Unfortunately, I can’t remember even what magazine it was, much less what author. The writer was talking those things that have to be put on the back burner. But, she wrote, what is usually on the back burner when we are cooking? Isn’t it something that has to simmer awhile, that is all the richer in flavor for the time it spent there on the back burner? The meat gets tender, the flavors blend, the smell wafts though the house, and we can hardly wait until dinnertime.

Oh, dear mother….what you are doing is vitally important. Your little one may not remember the specific things you did together or all your loving care in their early childhood, but those loving ministrations laid the foundation for your future relationship. The time you spend together reading, playing, rocking, feeding, nurturing a new little life that God has given to you to care for is precious.

As the children get older, their need of your care is still vital, though it is different from when they were small. Instead of feeling isolated at home, you may feel you are nearly living out of your car with all the places you have to take your children to. We have to keep a balance between giving them opportunities and spreading everyone too thin, but some of those times in the car can be precious as well. One of my sons does not open up to me if I sit across the table from him and ask him how things are going in his life, but a casual conversation or observation made while we are out and about can give me glimpses into his heart. Sometimes children feel a little freer to open up while we’re driving.

Someone once said, “With children, the days are long, but the years are short.” That is all too true. You have heard it before, but they do grow up so fast. You always have a ministry with them and an influence on them, but your main years of training them are when they are little. Redeem the time and enjoy it to the hilt.

Don’t worry about those things on the back burner. Give them a stir every now and then. Perhaps you can skim over the newspaper headlines or watch some of the evening news with your husband, or spend 15 minutes or so a day reading a good book to stimulate your mind. Buy a craft kit, take a class, jot down story ideas, or somehow “stir the pot” of whatever your areas of interest are. Take advantage of opportunities to get together with other ladies for fellowship. Explore what ministry opportunities you can within the constraints of your situation, but remember that ministry doesn’t only take place within the four walls of the church: getting to know your neighbor, inviting another mother from the baseball league to church, baby-sitting for another mother for a doctor’s appointment, giving a tract to the repairman are all outlets through which the Lord can use you as well as being an example to your children.

Then, as you stir those things on the back burner from time to time, perhaps you can take a small taste to test the readiness of it. After all, if you start to write the next great novel, and find the timing still isn’t right, you can let it simmer a little longer.

Don’t get discouraged if other women seem to have all their burners going at once, accomplishing things right and left. I used to lament that I couldn’t do as much as some other ladies til I finally had to come to grips with the fact that God made us with different capacities, abilities, and personalities.

Ultimately we have to entrust those back burner issues to our loving Lord and ask His guidance as to when and how to proceed with them. There may be some things He wants us to relinquish completely, and here our back burner analogy breaks down: there are some things He never intended for us to pursue, and we have to set aside what was a personal desire that was not His will. We have to remind ourselves that, no matter how strong and even good a desire was, if it is not God’s will, it would not have been good for us and may actually have been harmful and taken away from what He did have for us to do. On the other hand, we can’t let the back burner become a place of excuses and, due to laziness or fear, place things there that the Lord does want us to pursue now. How can we know the difference? By walking with him day by day, seeking His guidance, asking Him to open doors He wants open and close doors He wants closed. When it is His timing to finally serve one of those “back burner” dishes, it will indeed be “just right.”

31 Days of Inspirational Biography: Margaret Baxter, Puritan Wife Of Like Passions As We Are

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A few years ago I reviewed In Trouble and In Joy by Sharon James, which features four different women of God: Margaret Baxter, Sarah Edwards, Anne Steele, and Frances Ridley Havergal. Of Margaret Baxter I wrote:

Margaret Baxter was a rebellious, glamorous, well-to-do teen-ager who became a Christian under the preaching of her Puritan pastor, Richard Baxter. Though he was twice her age, Margaret fell in love with him, and in time her feelings were reciprocated, and they married. The union was a step down for Margaret socially and financially (Richard took care to arrange their finances in such a way that he did not have access to her money so it would not be thought he married her for her money), but  she had found her purpose in life and blossomed. This was a time when “Non-conformists” were persecuted, and when Richard was imprisoned for a while, Margaret voluntarily joined him. Both were, like all the rest of us, very human. Margaret was known for being generous, cheerful (Mrs. James notes, “It is simply not true that the Puritans went around looking miserable. Indeed, Richard Baxter wrote, “Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the godly; there is no mirth like the mirth of believers” [p. 49]), industrious, competent, capable, patient, supportive — and anxious, fearful, perfectionist, and over-zealous. Yet she was aware of and grieved by her faults, and it was her desire to live a holy life for God.

In the July/August 2002 issue of Frontline Magazine is an article by my former pastor, Dr. Mark Minnick, titled “’Dear Companion’ — A Husband’s Loving Tribute” about Richard Baxter’s now out-of-print book about his wife, A Breviate of the Life of Margaret, which appears to be online here. Richard Baxter was perhaps one of the better known Puritan preachers and writers. The Baxters lived in the 1600s. He was 47 and she was 26 when they married. One of their earliest marital adjustments was that he thought “so much ado about cleanliness and trifles” and keeping “stairs and rooms…as clean as dishes” was a “sinful eccentricity.” He did change his mind, however, and “left [such things] to her discretion.”

He writes of her “utter selflessness,” her charitable acts, her cheerfulness in hard times, her desire for the conversion of others, and many other aspects of her life. But the one thing I want to focus on in this short space is her fears. She was naturally “of too timorous and tender a nature,” and Baxter writes that her “diseased fearfulness” was “the great infirmity which tyrannized over her…against which she had little…free will or power.” “’Anything that had suddenness, noise, or fierceness in it’ upset her.” Dr. Minnick remarks that there may have been very good reason Margaret was this way: “Nearly her entire life was shot through with calamity. Her home had been stormed by soldiers when she was just a girl…plundered…and set on fire, [they] killed some of the household, and then stripped the very clothing from those they spared.“ She had nearly died from one illness; “there had been fires near her lodgings, the near collapse of the floor of an upper gallery…while Baxter was preaching” once; her mother’s death, her husband’s illnesses, dreams of “fires and murders.”

“For our encouragement and learning, this natural timidity displays that Margaret’s fearlessness before persecution was not simply the courage of a bold spirit. It was, Baxter wrote, ‘an evidence of the power of grace that so timorous a person…was more fearless of persecution, imprisonment, or losses and poverty thereby, than I or any that I remember to have known’” (emphases mine). She was a woman “of like passions” as we are, yet God’s grace strengthened her and caused her to triumph.

“Her husband’s troubles, care of the poor, and conscientious life all cost [her] dearly… Baxter reflected that perhaps her conscientious intensity contributed to her untimely death [after just nineteen years of marriage]. ‘She set her head and heart so intensely upon doing good that her head and heart would hardly bear it. Her knife was too keen,’ he observed, ‘and cut the sheath.’”

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For the 31 Days writing challenge, I am sharing 31 Days of Inspirational Biography. You can find others in the series here.

Laudable Linkage

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There has been a lot of good reading on the Web this week. Here are some posts and articles that stood out to me:

Worship with our lives, not just while singing on Sunday morning. Good exposition of what worship actually is.

Bible Study: Working With God on Your Goal, HT to my friend Kim,  who, by the way, is doing a 31 Day series on Scripture memory.

It’s Not Just a Guy Thing. Sometimes “the second glance has often already been decided long before the first.”

What If Knowing Your Spiritual Gift Doesn’t Matter? Sometimes we need to just step in to meet a need.

How do you train your children to manage their feelings? I think this is an sometimes an overlooked area of parenting.

When Your Friend Hurts. We need to weep with those who weep, not condemn them for hurting.

You can imagine that the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood would be at odds with  A Year of Biblical Womanhood, but I thought this review was balanced and gracious, at least as far as the concerns I’ve had with the book just in the reviews I’ve read. I have it in my Kindle app to read myself some day.

Teaching Boys to Be Respectful.

The Philanthropists: John D. Rockefeller. Sometimes the rich are vilified just by virtue of being rich, but the Bible does not condemn riches: it does instruct us not to trust in them and how to use them. I found this short biography very interesting.

Put the book down. Much as I love books, some times they do get in the way.

The Ultimate Secret to Effective Writing and Preaching.

A Case For Cessationism. I’ve been enjoying Tim Challies’ live-blogging of the “Strange Fire” Conference John MacArthur is having concerning the charismatic movement.

Weight Loss Bible Study.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Book Review: In Trouble and In Joy

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In trouble and in joy_dpThe first part of the title of In Trouble and In Joy: Four Women Who Lived for God by Sharon James comes from a line in a hymn by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady:

Through all the changing scenes of life,
In trouble and in joy,
The praises of my God shall still
My heart and tongue employ.

The four women Sharon James writes about in this book exemplify that truth: in varying degrees of trouble and joy, they lived for God.

Margaret Baxter was a rebellious, glamorous, well-to-do teen-ager who became a Christian under the preaching of her Puritan pastor, Richard Baxter. Though he was twice her age, Margaret fell in love with him, and in time her feelings were reciprocated, and they married. The union was a step down for Margaret financially (Richard took care to arrange their finances in such a way that he did not have access to her money so it would not be thought he married her for her money) and socially, but  she had found her purpose in life and blossomed. This was a time when “Non-conformists” were persecuted, and when Richard was imprisoned for a while, Margaret voluntarily joined him. Both were, like all the rest of us, very human. Margaret was known for being generous, cheerful (Mrs. James notes, “It is simply not true that the Puritans went around looking miserable. Indeed, Richard Baxter wrote, “Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the godly; there is no mirth like the mirth of believers'” [p. 49]), industrious, competent, capable, patient, supportive — and anxious, fearful, perfectionist, and over-zealous. Yet she was aware of and grieved by her faults, and it was her desire to live a holy life for God.

Sarah Edwards had eleven children as the wife of Jonathan Edwards in the early 1700s. The Edwards were known for their “uncommon union,” their great love and respect for each other, and Sarah’s hospitality. Sarah thrived as a wife and mother, but the Edwards’ faced their share of difficulty as well when Jonathan was dismissed from the church where he pastored and some of their children died.

Anne Steele lived in a small English village in the 1700s, never married, suffered from poor health most of her life (with what is thought now to have been malaria), published two volumes of hymns and poems, and was known for her cheerfulness and faith. It was expected at that time that young women would marry and have a family, and there is some correspondence of teasing between Anne and her sister about Anne’s unmarried state even though the sister admitted her life was not all rosy.

Frances Ridley Havergal lived in the Victorian 1800s and is best known as the writer of hymns such as “Take My Life and Let It Be” and “Like a River Glorious.” Her father was a pastor and she was very active in the ministry of the church, thriving in personal work, one-on-one discussions with others about the gospel and spiritual truth. When her father died, her step-mother made unusual demands and seemed to even be mentally unstable, but Frances did her best to honor her. She did travel a lot and kept running, amusing accounts of her experiences: letters from her travels to Switzerland were gathered together in a book titled Swiss Letters.  She turned down several proposals of marriage, though she “once wrote of the sense of ‘general heart-loneliness and need of a one and special love…and the belief that my life is to be a lonely one in that respect…I do so long for the love of Jesus to be poured in, as a real and satisfying compensation'” (pp. 193-194). She was a prolific writer of hymns and books. She “loved life, enjoyed people, revelled in nature, and laughed a lot” (p. 200).

The book deals with each woman individually, detailing her historical setting, the story of her life, her character and significance, and excerpts from her writing. Mrs. James’ style of writing is somewhat academic, more like teaching a class than telling a story: that’s not a bad thing, but I had picked up this book because I had read and enjoyed her earlier one, My Heart In His Hands about Ann Judson, and I don’t remember it being quite that way, though it has been years since I read it.

I didn’t agree with all of Mrs. James’ conclusions about why the women did what they did or the few things for which she criticized them: for example, she faults some of the women for not being more socially active. She wrote of Frances: “Although she was always ready to give benevolent help on an individual level, there is little evidence that Frances had strong feelings about the blatant social and political inequalities of that time” (p. 201). Some of us feel that dealing with individual hearts, resulting in a true heart change, will take care of the larger issues, and that Christians are called to share the gospel and make disciples, not necessarily battle the culture itself (though it’s not wrong to fight social ills). Mrs. James does go on to say of Frances, “And yet the ‘limiting’ of her vision to gospel issues meant that she was extraordinarily focused. Her mental and spiritual energies were not diffused into many different areas,” allowing a greater concentration on vital issues of “salvation, consecration, and worship” (p. 201). These women had their hands full enough with what they did do to warrant criticism for what they didn’t do.

I did appreciate Mrs. James research, insight, and masterful compilation of the details of these women’s lives. There is much about each woman’s  life to instruct Christian women. To give just one example, one of Frances’s letters tells of the hostility and “appalling service” she received at an inn in Switzerland. Where most of us would be fuming and calling for the manager, Frances reacted patiently and finally said to the angry, spiteful woman, “You are not happy. I know that you’re not.” the woman was startled, “tamed…made a desperate effort not to cry” and listened while Frances spoke to her “quite plainly and solemnly about Jesus.” She received a tract, promised to read it, and thanked Frances over and over. Frances concluded, “Was it not worth getting out of the groove of one’s usual comforts and civilities?” (pp. 250-251). I have to confess that was a rebuke to me: I rarely think of such situations as a means of service to others.

Mrs. James concludes:

They had different personalities and varied situations, but each of these four women lived focused lives, wanting to praise God through days of trouble as well as joy. As is true of many women, they had to juggle all sorts of responsibilities. Pursuing holiness did not mean running away from these responsibilities: it involved living every day wholeheartedly for God (p. 253).

(This review will be linked to Semicolon’s Saturday Review of books and Callapidder Days’ Spring Reading Thing Reviews.)